


Push

by LovelyPlantPrincess



Category: Sons of Anarchy
Genre: F/M, Florist!Gemma, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Tattoo Artist!Gemma, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-25 10:09:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6190801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyPlantPrincess/pseuds/LovelyPlantPrincess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gemma gets what she wants after a lifetime - plus seven years - of waiting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Push

_ She was always driving fast, pushing the limit on more than just her speed. She never paused to smell the roses - she was too busy blowing them away on big motorcycles with shiny chrome. She wanted the wind through her hair and her heart and she wanted to ride the road of her veins. She wanted and she wanted fiercely.  _

_ “Slow down, Gemma. The world’s still out there, and it’ll be out there for the rest of your life,” her brother tells her, a warm smile on his lips as he turns his face upwards towards the stars. Despite being six years her junior, Nate seems to understand everything he is saying to her in that moment. He shouldn't, but he does. _

_ “Yeah, but I want it now,” she replies, mimicking his actions. She tilts her head up so that her too-short hair her tickles at the nape of her neck, and a small smile forms her lips. Despite not being able to warm her face like the sun does, the stars have a calming effect on her and she finds herself wanting to stay with her brother forever. _

_ “And you’ll have it, I assure you. You’ll have everything you’ve ever wanted. You’ll go fast, one day, Gemma Madock.” _

* * *

 

She realizes, when she’s older, that things are different. She can’t push too hard anymore - she has to  _ straddle  _ the line of danger, she’s not ready to ride it. Rose is many things, but she  _ isn’t  _ stupid. And Nate can’t be Gemma’s knight in shining armor anymore because he’s dead (it was pathetic to rely on her little brother, but she did and she's not ashamed of that anymore). She just has her father, and he ain’t much of a man - too scared of Rose and what she might do. Too much of a coward. Gemma has to look out for herself.

So she tucks away her dreams of motorcycles and motorbikes and a fast life. Slips them under her mattress in her room along with five hundred bucks and a shiny silver pistol. She wants to fight back, wants to rebel against her mother’s iron fist - she wants nothing more than to watch Rose spiral out of control as she realizes she had no more over her daughter. But she’s still grieving Nate - in her twisted way of pretending he never existed - and she just wants things to relax for now. 

“Whatever happened to us gettin’ out, Gem?” Wayne Unser asks her, the night of his prom. She’s only fifteen, and she sort of _didn’t_ want to go with him, but they didn’t really go to prom anyways. They got all dressed up, let Nate and Rose take some pictures, then climbed in his car and drove to the park.

“It’ll happen one day. I’m still young,” she says, grinning at the twenty-year-old boy getting high in the passenger seat. He never was all that smart, that Wayne Unser. Soft-hearted, occasionally a bit sharp-tongued, but never smart. That’s probably why this is his third prom  _and_ it’s probably because of all that marijuana he smokes.

“You were never a one day type of girl. You were always wanting to capture the now.” Wayne always gets insightful after midnight, and especially when he’s getting high. Gemma watches his fingers as they go about the pattern of rolling joints. She smirks at the slow process.

“Yeah, well, sometimes, we grow up. Things change. And they slow down.” He looks up at her and winks.

“You grew up too fast, Gemma Madock.”

“I do a lot of things too fast, Wayne Unser.”

* * *

 

She says no to her chance at an open road. She’s on a school field trip in San Diego when she’s seventeen. A group of kids coerced her into sneaking out and finding some guys to buy them some beer - and she finds them at a gas station, filling up their bikes. They’re everything she’s ever dreamed of - the shiny chrome. The beautiful, big wheels. The leather cuts. 

She feels intoxicated by them.

The oldest man in the group notices her staring and approaches her. He has a thick beard and a ponytail and it’s the first time that she’s ever seen a man with a ponytail. In Charming, men were expected to cut their hair to a respectable length… either that, or let it bald. 

“You lookin’ for something, Missy?”

“Alcohol. Beer. I have the money,” Gemma sputters, feeling oddly out of character. The older man grins at the girl and turns a blonde, blue-eyed man sitting behind him. 

“Get the girl a case of beer and some cheap whiskey, Clay.” Gemma watches with wide eyes at the kid - can’t be too much older than her, maybe by five or six years - heads inside the store and does as told. While they wait for him to return, the man tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear.

“You’re pretty, sweetheart. You want to go for a ride?”

Gemma looks longingly at the bike that he gestures to. She could. She could say yes, and screw the kids back at the hotel or screw her family back home. She could grit her teeth and swing her legs over the back of that bike and feel the vibration between her thighs. Better than any Wayne Unser or Randy Phillips. She could.

But she doesn’t.

“No thanks, mister,” Gemma whispers, and presses the money into his hand as she does so. “I have to get back. I have people counting on me.”

_ Clay  _ comes out of the store and hands Gemma the bags with the items. Their fingers brush and he gives her a lopsided grin. Noticing their small exchange, the older biker nudges the blonde one.

“Take her home, and then meet up back at the Peak. We still have business.” Gemma agrees to the ride back - she’d rather ride than walk in the cold. And Blondey seems more than willing to give her a lift.

“Thanks,” she says. 

The ride back is quiet and serene, but nothing about Gemma feels that way. It feels like there are flames licking under her skin and she gets the urge to stand on the bike, outstretch her arms, and hug the oncoming winds. Instead she keeps her arms tightly wrapped around the man’s waist - who’s name is Clay - and her cheek pressed firmly against the leather of his cut. She’s almost tempted to tell him to go back to the station and let her go with him. Instead, she swings her legs off the bike when he comes to a stop at the hotel and smiles at him.

“Bye, Clay.”

“Bye… er…”

She giggles as she says, “Gemma.”

Clay grins at her and they stare at each other for a moment. Gemma’s the one that leans in and kisses him. He tastes like cigarettes and alcohol and what it feels like to be high on excitement. He tastes like every intoxicating bad thing on Earth and she wants nothing more than to fall with him, right there, on that night. And by the way his hand is fisted in her hair, he wants the same thing.

“Call me,” she whispers, when she pulls away from the kiss.

“I don’t have your number.”

“I have a feeling that you are a very resourceful man, Clay.”

“And I have a feeling that I’ll see you again, Gemma.”

She laughs as she saunters into the hotel. He was right. They’d see each other again.

\--

Of course she’s right. She’s twenty-four when they come back, and she’s dating Unser, who swears that one day he’ll take her away from Charming. She works as a part-time tattoo artist and part-time as a florist. It’s the oddest thing to people - watching her tattoos flex and move with her muscles as she prepares the floral arrangement for their loved ones wedding.

And then those loved ones come into her office three nights later to get their names tattooed on each other’s ass… by their florist.

The boys roll into the tattoo parlor one day, and she recognizes something familiar in the hard blue eyes of the man that’s watching everything going on around him quietly. A bunch of them set up appointments to get some new ink, and Gemma’s just finishing up with one of them when he finally makes his introduction.

“Gemma,” he eventually says, when she’s done sketching the tattoo she’ll be doing on one of the boys. Her eyes flash and suddenly, she’s not twenty-four and bored of her life. Suddenly, she’s seventeen and pressing her hands against a sturdy, rock hard chest. Suddenly, her chin is itching from the scratch of stubble and she feels like running free. “I told you that we’d meet again.”

“Clay,” she breathes, even if she’s not sure how. It feels like the air has been knocked out of her chest. “Hi.”

“Hey, sweetheart. I saved myself for you.” Gemma snorts and shakes her head at him.

“Nothing changes,” she grins. Clay pulls his bottom lip between his teeth briefly. 

“Except for when everything does,” he whispers back. She catches herself in a mirror that customers usually use to check out their tattoos. Dark hair streaked through with blonde, cherry red lips... seven years definitely made a shit-ton of difference. A tight black blouse and tight short shorts to match then ensemble. Even the red pumps on her feet. She had morphed from that shy, rosy cheeked girl he’d met at the gas station. “You grew up fast, Gemma.”

“I do a lot of things fast, Clay,” Gemma grins, recalling a conversation from too long ago. It’s his turn to snort. He says nothing in reply though - maybe he was all too familiar with the feeling.

“What ever happened to your boss friend?” she asks, her eyebrow quirked. She didn’t see the man amongst the rowdy bikers in her shop - and for some reason, she’s disappointed.

“Meh. Maybe you should come around and see for yourself.”

“Yeah. Maybe I should. Where?”

“Him and his pretty little wife own a fix-up shop a couple of blocks over. Although, it has my name on it. Teller-Morrow.”

“So, you’re Clay  _ Morrow _ ?”

“How’d you guess?” 

“Well,  _ your  _ name was second.” He laughs at this, and it seems as if they’ve been friends for years. Not practical strangers who met one night to exchange beer. 

“Okay, you know my last name now. Only fair that I get that same courtesy. You left me wondering for seven years.”

“It  _ has  _ been that long, hasn’t it. Gemma Madock. And that’s my maiden name, so don’t worry.” She feels dirty, with that sentence. Wayne would be waiting for her when she got back in the morning, no matter how early he had to go to work. He’d be waiting for her with a cup of coffee because he knew the tattoo parlor always ran late, even if she was only a part-time employee. Wayne, with his gentle forehead kisses and his acceptance that Gemma doesn’t want him, she just needs his normalcy. He’d hold her and she’d mutter something about being exhausted and he’d be there when she fell asleep, but not when she woke up to go into the flower shop. Sweet, sweet, Wayne Unser.

If she went to that fix-up shop, she knew she’d wind up cheating on him and that just wasn’t fucking fair.

But then Clay smiles at her, all white pearly teeth. And he presses and gentle kiss to her knuckles and looks up at her with puppy dog eyes and suddenly, she couldn’t care less about Wayne Unser or their five year relationship. All she wants is for this big, bad biker to take her to places she’s never been and show her things she’s never seen. She just wants someone to give some push to her pull.

“I’ll be there Clay. But will there be something to look forward to afterwards?”

“Of course there’ll be. I’m a man of many surprises.”

“Like finding jailbait again after seven years.”

“Not jailbait anymore, ‘less you’re a vampire.”

“Not a vampire, but I’ll suck something out of you,” Gemma leans in real close when she says that and she can tell by the way that sends shudders through Clay that he likes the idea. He flutters his eyes closed and she smiles against his ear.

Screw Wayne indeed.

\--

John is the name of Clay’s boss and he has beautiful wife named Annaleigh and two sons - boys named John and Thomas Teller. It’s kind of creepy that each boy took one of their father’s names, but Gemma keeps her mouth shut about it. She would’ve named the first Jackson, because she’s always loved the name, and maybe keep the second as Thomas. She could’ve done that too - she could be the brunette woman sitting on John’s lap, a beer between her lips and something dirty in her eyes. But she’s not. She’s just the tattoo artist and the florist and Clay’s date.

She says hello to John, who doesn’t recognize her because apparently the club made a habit of going around and giving girls beer. But Clay mutters something in his ear and his eyes light up. He pushes Annaleigh off his lap and pulls Gemma into a bone crushing hug that leaves her wheezing.

“You were the girl that I almost made my old lady,” he grins.

“You didn’t even know me,” Gemma snorts. John relents that one to her and a pouty looking Annaleigh presses herself into his side at the same moment. Ah, the jealous type. “Hi. I’m Gemma Madock. Your old man bought some alcohol for me when I was seventeen.”

“Really? Ah, John. He’s always sweet talkin’ girls that’re too young for him. I was eighteen when we got married and had Johnny.”

“How old are you now?” Gemma asks, because she can’t fight the curiosity. Clay is standing behind her, his hand resting comfortably on the small of her back and he feels  _ right _ . His thumb rubs soothing circles over the cloth that hides a badass serpent tattoo that her best friend did for her when she was twenty. 

“Twenty-four.”

Gemma barks out a laugh, utters a ‘me too’, and says nothing more. Clay drags her along, introducing her to the other members. Bobby, a man around John’s age that does Elvis impersonations sometimes. Piermont - _ Actually, darlin, jus’ Piney’sfine. _ \- a tall, booming man with his own son that seems to be best friend with John’s kid. A prospect around her age named Tig. She actually introduces  _ herself  _ to Tig because Clay is pulled away by Piney. He’s funny, she realizes quickly, and it’s like being around Nate again.

“What’s your name?” Gemma asks, rubbing her thumb over the neck of her beer. Tig snorts.

“ _ Prospect _ . Yours?”

“Gemma Madock. Now, seriously,” she prods, poking at his side. He snorts again, but this time he jumps away too. He’s ticklish. That’s cute. “What’s your name?”

“Alexander Trager. But most of ‘em just call me Tig.”

“Why?”

“‘Cause I like to  _ boing, boing, boing _ !” he chuckles, making thrusting motions with his hips. Gemma fights the urge to slap her palm to her face as she laughs at his foolery. 

“So, Tig, can I ask you something?” He shrugs and looks around. No one was paying them any attention except for Clay - he’d been keeping a close eye on her all night, but he seemed to be more focused on her now that she was with Tig. She wonders how much of a joke his nickname really is.

“Yeah, but I don’t think Clay’ll like me telling girls his dick size,” he says.

“No, not about him. What… what exactly do you guys do in your motorcycle club? Like-”

“I can’t tell you that,” Tig says in a low voice. His shockingly blue eyes seem to harden and he grips Gemma’s shoulder, pulling her close so that no one else can hear what he tells her. “Look, I don’t know if you’re involved with Clay or not. I don’t care. But if you are, you better learn quickly. You’re just a croweater - an old lady if you happen to get lucky. If he tells you something, you take it with a grain of salt and pretend he didn’t. The only ways you’ll get to know club business is if you’re a member - which will never happen, because chicks don’t ride in the club. Or if you’re an enemy - which you don’t want to be. Or if you’re an ally - which you won’t be, because you’re not in any other gangs, else Clay wouldn’t have brought you here. Or if you’re the President's old lady.”

Both of their eyes flit to Annaleigh, who’s sitting next to some of the other women and muttering something or another. Gemma finally pinpoints the dirty look in her eyes. Secrets. Somehow, someway, she was looking at Gemma with eyes full of secrets.

“Now laugh and bat my arm,” he mutters. Gemma barely falters in her confusion, laughing quickly and batting at his arm. At that exact moment, Clay snatches her away from Tig and she nearly stumbles on her heels.

“Off limits. Back off, Trager,” Clay says with a dark voice.

“We were just talking,” Gemma assures him. She presses a kiss to his cheek for emphasis, and this seems to cool Clay down a bit. “Just talking. Tig is really funny, however. I did not know that German girls were that flexible.”

Following her lead, Tig finds a napkin he had tucked into his shirt and twists it into a pretzel. Gemma fakes another laugh and the entire thing seems to be to Clay’s satisfaction because he nods at Tig and drags her away.

“You’re acting awfully possessive,” she whispers to him.

“I think I’d have the right,” he replies with a shrug. “I wait seven years for you, I deserve a little possession.”

“Mhm. Well, I have to go home. I have to make dinner and-” she cuts herself off before she can tip him off on her boyfriend. “-do some cleaning. And stuff.”

“I know about Unser, Gemma, it’s okay. And I had to take a Math test in the seventh grade.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I’m just naming things that we cheat on,” he says slyly. Gemma feels a chill run through her, feels the goosebumps prickle her skin. “It’s getting dark. We always have Clubhouse parties after dark. Come to the party.”

“I have to get back to the parlor.”

“You’re taking a sick day. Today, tomorrow… the rest of your life,” Clay whispers. She hadn’t realized it, but they’ve slipped inside the office of the fix-up shop. Clay locks the door behind him and hoists her up onto the desk. Her legs instinctively wrap around his waist and his hands plant themselves firmly on either side of her hips. “If you will be mine, Gemma Madock?”

“I just met you.”

“But it doesn’t feel that way, does it?”

“... No,” she admits, breathlessly. “No, it  _ doesn’t _ .”

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the crappy writing. I cranked this out in a hurry and had to publish it.


End file.
